“What ordinary man could fight a soldier? And who amongst the common soldiery could fight an elite? Or a mage, or one of true power? There is no great wonder to the order of our society. Those who have power rule, and those without are ruled.”

Jaikard the Green

Zidaun's changed appearance prompted the appropriate caution, even if he had warned them. However, none of Firi's spells detected any problems, and the others' inspection revealed nothing either. Zidaun had wanted to roll his eyes a number of times, but checking for issues was a smart decision. Finally the absolute dearth of evidence, combined with his immunity to mental influence, had caused them to switch modes.

Zidaun almost wished they would just go back to being suspicious.

“No Gurek, I cannot tell you anything about the dungeon, or why I changed, other than what I already told you. And no matter how many times you ask, that is not going to change.”

Inda and Firi just chuckled as Gurek pestered him.

“Ha, see if I help you two with anything. Next time he decides to prank you I will just look the other way.”

Gurek got a sly look. “Really,?” he said.

Zidaun grinned at him, “Really.”

Inda grimaced while Firi sighed. “Surely there is no need to go that far,” she said.

Zidaun just grinned at her.

“Shit.”

After their poking and prodding, followed by Gurek's personal brand of torture, Zidaun was ready to prank them himself. He had any number of interesting ideas...

“Anyway,” he said, “did we want to actually explore this dungeon at some point or continue to poke and prod at me until another team arrives?”

That was a fairly low risk, especially with the slog through the snow, but it was not impossible.

Firi sighed, “Well there goes all the fun.” He winked at Zidaun. “Guess we will need to get back to work.”

After some brief discussion it was decided that they should go to one of the other buildings for the moment, since Zidaun had already done some testing with the magical items to see what the dungeon gave for them.

The door of the small building opened to reveal stairs leading down in a spiral. The long spiral brought them back out into a room of moderate size. Roughly 30 feet by 30 feet with a 15 foot ceiling. Toward the middle of the room were two flat topped pillars, each about waist high, that were 20 feet apart. They were identical, with one pillar having a small cube of stone on it with a protruding handle.

Zidaun was about to speak when he felt a familiar movement of aura. A stone man, identical to the one from before, walked out of a wall and grabbed the handle of the cube. It brought the cube to the other pedestal and set it down. The door slid into the wall, showing a glimpse of a similar room. A moment later the door closed again and the small cube disappeared. On the starting pedestal another cube appeared, but this time is was a solid block of stone in a 3 ft cube. Multiple handles protruded from the sides. The statue went over to the cube tried to lift it. It did not succeed. The statue hung its shoulders in dejection and then went and placed both its palms on the other pillar. A door appeared and the statue left through the door.

“Shurum's shaft that was creepy,” Gurek said.

Firi scowled at him.

“Yeah, yeah. Not like the gods care what I say about them. Not like we don't get to see the results of their lovemaking every year.”

Firi scowled harder.

“That is a sacred event.”

“Well I wish they would get on with it, Thaw is late this year.”

Firi opened his mouth to reply, but Inda cut him off.

“Not that this isn't fascinating, but perhaps we should get this... task over with.”

=

==

=

Absorbing the strange offering from the plant man had been far more rewarding than he would have imagined. Certainly there was the reward of the plant itself. Which also appeared to be the stages of the plant man's life cycle. Not to mention all the ridiculous amount of optional adaptations. There were also the more tangible rewards from the system.

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Skill Increases

Your skill Life Affinity II has increased to Life Affinity III

Your skill Destructive Assimilation II has increased to Destructive Assimilation III

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Of course, after that things had become a little strange.

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New Titles Added!

Partial Soul Bond (Master)

Your soul is permanently bound to the Adar you have made a pact with. You are the master of this Adar and may command and direct it as you choose. Your choices and nature may alter their nature. This bond is currently unstable and incomplete due to an inability to communicate and understand the nature of the pact. Once you understand the pact you may complete or refuse the pact's conditions.

=Bonuses temporarily suspended

This Immortal Coil

You may resurrect the Adar ancient that you are bound to upon their death.

Additive Pact

When an Adar bonds with you, or your ancient under contract, the bond will also extend to the other member of the pact.

Soul Power I

An upgraded form of Soul Specialist forged from your focus on soul related skills and multiple soul connections. You have already made progress the powers of the soul, now go out and make more.

+All soul related powers are slightly more powerful

+Connections with other souls provide additional benefits

+100 Ability Points

+50 Bonus Points for skipping the Soul Specialist Title

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Wait... what?

Caden was more than a little nonplussed.

The soul bond had freaked him out for a second, but the fact that it was something he would have the chance to veto once he understood it properly calmed him back down. He was really glad for the bonus, but now he had no idea what was going on. And the plant man (the Adar?) had gone through changes that looked suspiciously like they were influenced by his own core.

Too many possibilities all at once...

Oh. It looked like they were entering one of the tests. The test of strength it looked like. Caden shook himself out of it.

A few moments later he was done with his demonstration and watched the plant guy walk into the next room, which promptly sealed shut behind him. The three on the other side of the door freaked out for a bit, until one of them noticed that the testing pillars had reset and they realized they needed to do the test again to move forward.

In the mean time the plant man had taken the slightly larger stone weight and moved it, opening the next room. Then he had moved on.

Eventually a similar pattern happened with each of them as they progressed through the rooms one at a time. However an interesting thing happened when the plant man had finally reached the limit of his own strength, he had bent the stone of the dungeon to move the weight for him onto the next pillar. It felt almost... itchy to have someone use his aura for their own magic, but it was fascinating to watch. It was obvious that Caden's natural technique was far superior, but he had mostly been acting based on the instincts implanted by the skill. By watching someone else use the power more clumsily, he was able to see how his techniques differed. Little folds of the aura here and there, some making it more mana efficient, some causing mana wastage.

Caden had tried to make his usage of mana more efficient before, now he felt like be might be closer to understanding that goal. And even if his aura did not directly obey his exact control, it responded to his intent.

The amount of weight the plant man had been able to move, albeit with some considerable effort, even before he started to use magic had been impressive. Caden could not measure exact weights, but be was guessing at least a ton. The amount he could move with magic was simply ridiculous. Though Caden had to admit he could not be too surprised, since the power used was the same one used to shape and create the vastness of the dungeon in the first place. Or, at least something very similar to that power.

The test had finally ended with a massive, super dense cube of reinforced stone. The plant man had not been able to move it with tendrils of stone, and had eventually been forced to raise portions of the floor, a little at a time, until he had created a slope that he used more stone to push the cube down. Eventually he had managed to move it to the other pillar. Caden had decided that was more than enough, especially since the last test room had taken hours unto itself. The plant man could obviously overcome truly astronomical weights, and so on, but if they were heavy enough the time required would be truly incredible.

The others had not been idle either. The woman and the shorter man had both been able to move weights of about the same size. Not quite as large as the plant man, but still above what Caden thought anyone but a world champion weightlifter might be able to manage. Maybe it was more, it was hard to tell. Each had then activated some kind of skill or power, since he had felt fluctuations of mana, and they had proceeded to move larger weights. They moved through the first few rooms after that relatively quickly, but had needed increasingly large amounts of rest. They were able to move a surprisingly large amount of weight, the woman beating out the man by a fair margin, though each failed to get anywhere close to the amount of force shown by the magic of the plant man.

Aside from the plant the large man had definitely been the most interesting. He had gotten the farthest using pure strength. Then, like the others, he had enhanced his own body to start moving weights around. When that had started to become difficult he had done something different. In addition to his body, he had used magic on the cube, which Caden had abruptly felt become lighter. Fascinated Caden had watched closely until the end of his trial, watching his magic do... something to lighten the cube. He had only been able to copy out patterns in stone, but maybe he could do something with the magic later.

In the mean time, the large man finished well before the plant man was ready, but also had gotten farther than the others through the rooms, with the massive exception of the plant man who had moved more weight than all the rest of the team put together, many times over.

In the end, however, each had finished the trials of strength and the results had imprinted themselves onto the marks he had given to each of them.